


Detour

by jerseydevious



Series: CEC Shorts [4]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, audreycritter let me borrow her universe for a minute, cor et cerebrum, none editing left writing, now kids while audrey's not here i'm going to have to set the place on fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 07:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18115679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Bruce tries to make Dev breakfast, and gets a lot more than he bargained for.





	Detour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreycritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/gifts).



> I uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh didn't edit this.

The sizzle of the eggs in the pan had helped, at first—the sound was just this side of danger, just close enough to what happened when Firefly pulled out a small butane lighter for more detailed work that Bruce’s brain could focus on it. But after a minute or so the sound grew monotonous, and Bruce pinched the meat of his hand to stay awake. Dev would be up soon enough. He could hold on a half an hour longer, to finish this one thing, and he could—Bruce wondered if he’d make it home, tested his mental strength like it was ice on a lake. He wasn’t sure. 

 

He pulled the pan of eggs off the eye, slid them with a fork onto a waiting plate, and covered it with several napkins. Interesting. Interesting, that his body would feel like it were hooked into a livewire, like there was some sensation hidden behind glass—like he was walking in an aquarium and could see a white shark hidden behind three inches of glass. If it struck, he would feel the jolt. But he couldn’t feel the pain. Interesting, that his body would—

 

His head was ringing.

 

“—sod it all, you—no, Wayne, _ don’t—” _

 

Bruce pushed himself upright, leaning back against the stove. He blinked several times, hard, to keep Dev in focus. “You look tired,” he rasped.    
  


Dev’s eyebrows and mouth twitched in unison, like he was just barely holding back a yell, or just barely keeping his hands from tearing out his hair in fistfuls. Bruce remembered Dev with pneumonia _ —can’t breathe, can’t, can’t, drowning— _ clawing at his own hair, and wondered if his heart would ever not twist when he did. 

 

“Sure I am,” Dev said, lightly, “tired of your sodding nonsense. Give me your hand, you wanker, if I start yelling at you now I rather think you’ll fall asleep.”   
  


“Hand?” Bruce said. Dev reached for the hand in Bruce’s lap, and Bruce raised it for him; only then did he see the bright red-and-pink blistering. “I—hn.”

 

Dev inspected it carefully, but quickly. His fingers were warm, where he’d been asleep, and his hair was mussed—and were those—

 

“I thought I ruined your turtle pants,” Bruce said hoarsely. 

 

“Five bloody bucks at Target. Can you get up?”

 

“Yes,” Bruce said, twisting to brace his hands against the floor. 

 

Dev caught his wrist. “The burn, Wayne.”

 

Then Dev’s arm was snaking under his, hauling him upright. Bruce blinked briefly and leaned too hard into the touch, nearly sending them toppling into the refrigerator; but once he was up, he was alright. Dev’s hand hovered over his chest anyway. Dev led them both to the sink, where he fiddled with the nobs for a moment. 

 

“You’ve not popped any sodding stitches, have you,” Dev asked, while he flicked his free hand through the water to test the temperature. “Hold it there. That’s it.”

 

Bruce thought for a minute. “No. I came… here.”

 

“Thought so. We’ll talk about why in the sodding hell you decided to come here  _ two days _ after being shot in the stomach when you’ve slept at all.”

 

“I’ve slept,” Bruce protested. 

 

“Wayne.” Dev looked at him seriously, arching a brow. “No you haven’t. Have you slept at all since I saw you last?”

 

Bruce shook his head. 

 

Dev exhaled. “Shite. D’you want my bed, or the couch?”

 

“I can… head back,” Bruce said, quietly. “I don’t want to—”

 

Dev’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Last week you fell asleep in my bloody refrigerator. In the refrigerator, mate. Inside of it. You’re alright.”

 

Bruce jerked his head to his hand. “It’s not hurting.”

 

“And your pain tolerance is frankly ridiculous. Leave it a minute more. Can you stay upright?”

 

Bruce shifted back, squared his shoulders. “Yes,” he said, simply. 

 

Dev left briefly and returned with a roll of white gauze. He pointed to the couch. “You’re not getting up after this, so if you do want the sodding bed after all, tell me now.” 

 

Bruce just sat down on the couch—feeling was starting to return to him, through the pressing, all-encompassing haze of exhaustion. Maybe it was the temperature of the water, maybe it was the burn itself, but it was probably Dev’s touch, gentle and firm at the same time. Dev kneeled in front of him to wrap his hand.

 

“Knew you’d pick the couch,” Dev said.

 

“Hn. It’s mine. It has my blood on it.”

 

Dev chuckled. “You’re a right prick, mate, you know that?”

 

“You were in my brain. You could’ve fixed that,” Bruce said, smiling almost against his will. 

 

Dev rose, pulled a pillow off the pile sitting in a chair next to the TV, and tossed it at Bruce’s head. “Bundle up. I’m the sodding doctor and I’ve ordered rest. You can sleep or you can lay there or we can talk about what reason you’ve got for not sleeping, but you won’t do a sodding thing else.”

 

Bruce reached back and stuffed the pillow behind his head. “At least eat my breakfast,” he said. 

 

“Trust me, Wayne. I was planning to.”

 

And that was the last he remembered before he had the dream. The oldest dream, the one at the root of them all; there was blood soaking the knees of his pants, where he knelt in the swirling pools of his parents, and there was the boiling hot and humid air, and there wetness on his face and the cobblestone was digging into his knees. It had been one shot after the other. His father, face down, mouth opening and closing like a fish, gasping in air and only getting mouthfuls of blood, and for the rest of his life Bruce would wonder what he was trying to say—and the oldest dream was only this, no hellish embellishment, only this and nothing more for every day and every hour spiralling into the long black throat of forever—

 

“—forever, for you. Up, Wayne.”

 

Bruce jerked, his head whipping around the room. “What the—what the hell, Dev?”

 

Dev was holding a wooden spoon and a pot, and didn’t look the least bit sorry. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said, dropping both pot and spoon on the floor. “You were dreaming, mate. Sounded like a sodding bad one.”   
  


Bruce sat up, feeling a stabbing pain in his gut where he’d been shot. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes—and there was a wetness, hanging around his eyes, meaning he cried in his sleep. “Fuck,” he said. 

 

Wordlessly, Dev handed him a glass of water and a plastic cup of pills. Bruce knocked back the pills and chugged the whole glass. 

 

He pulled the blankets tighter around him and curled into the couch, hoping Dev would allow him to return to sleep—but a weight pressed against the couch, as if someone were leaning against it. 

 

After ten minutes—and Bruce knew exactly how long it’d been, because he’d counted seconds—Bruce finally said, “My father wasn’t dead instantly when he was shot.” If his voice wavered, he trusted that Dev wouldn’t mock it. 

 

“He was alive for a couple minutes after he was shot. Three. And all he did in that time was gasp, like a fish out of water. And all I did was watch him.”

 

A tentative hand had reached down, was thumbing the hair behind Bruce’s ear. Bruce’s eyes closed involuntarily at the touch. “I was just shot almost exactly where my father was,” he whispered. “And I lived.”

 

“Bloody hell, Wayne,” Dev said, thickly. “Sit up.”

 

Bruce’s brain chose that moment to return from its lapse of logic, and he remembered  _ what _ he was talking about, and  _ who _ he was talking to, and if Kiran Devabhaktuni had been a violent man Bruce wouldn’t have begrudged him knocking out several teeth. 

 

He sat up and looked at Dev, babbling out an, “I’m sorry,” that never got finished—halfway through, Dev sat down beside him and hugged him.

 

“Doctor’s orders,” Dev mumbled into Bruce’s collarbone, and, startled, Bruce chuckled. 

 

They stayed in the hug for a while—long enough that Bruce fell asleep, and Dev would text Alfred  _ help i’ve a leech,  _ which Bruce would see on Dev’s phone a whole day and a half later.

**Author's Note:**

> I uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh didn't edit this.


End file.
